The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1887-09-30
A FAMOUS DUELIST.
Some Inter esting Stories Of a
/ Noted French Fire-Eater.

ton. No traces of it are to be found
among any of the nations of anti
guilty. The medieval trial by brute
force would seem to have been the
foundation of the modern duel. The
first recognition of single combat as a
regular judicial proceeding is to be
found in the laws of Gundebald,
King of the Burgundians, at the begin
ming Of the sixth century. The prac-
tice spread rapidly mong the warlike
Franks, and in the reign of Charlie
magne, three hundred years later,
1t had become so universal that not
only the parties in common suit at
law, but the witnesses and even the
Judges were constantly summoned to
mortal combat in support of the JUS
tice of their cause, the truth of their
testimony or the uprightness of their
decisions. This manner of trial was
afterward restricted by Louis VII to
the decision of criminal accusations of
civil causes, when, as shown by the
ordinance he rendered in 1853, the OBJ
Ject of the dispute exceeded five ''sols,"
or cents, in value-fve cents in those
days being, of course, much larger
sum than it is to-day.
These laws and customs are the
sources of the duel; and it is from this
ancient practice of making the sword
the scale of justice that the modern
duel, modified from time to time, has
descended to us. Single combat as a
Judicial proceeding did not, however,
survive the fifteenth century, and with
its gradual disappearance the modern
duel became the recognized means of
vindleating offended honor Italy was
the first great field for this modified
single combat. Thence the rage
spread with redoubled fury into
France, Spain and Great Britain. In
England we hear little of it before the
profigate days of the Stuarts. But it
is France that affords the most detailed
and authorized records of dueling.
The French Kings and Parliament long
maintained its formal and practical le-
gality. Henry II. presided, with his
whole court, at the combat between M.
de acknowledgements and M. de Jarnac,
caused by scandal, which terminated
in the death of La Chataigneraie;
when dc Jarnac, his hands yet reeking
with his kinsman's blood, raised them
to Heaven and exclaimed: "Not unto
me, 0 Lord, but unto Thy name be
thanks" Charles TX. was the last
French King who presided at one of
these exhibitions; so he was also the
first who sought to check the practice
by naming Court of Honor" for the
satisfaction of offenses committed
against its laws. In Henry Tvs
reign, and in defiance of his edicts in
tlicting the penalty of death on all du-
elists, there fell in duels no fewer than
four thousand of his subjects, while up
wards of fourteen thousand pardons
were granted for fighting.
About half way up the Rue de Jour,
near the Sainte-Eustache Church. in
Paris, is an old house, rendered con-
spicuous by WIDE porch and extensive
stock-in-trade OF china. This, two
centuries ago, was the Hotel de Roy
aumont, built by Philippe Hurault,
Bishop of Charles and Able of Royau-
mont Later on, it was occupied by
Francois de Montmorency, Comte de
Bouteville, who made it general
rendezvous for the duelists of Paris.
All the gentlemen of the court, eager
to challenge any of their peers over
some love intrigue, or who for some
personal motive looked daggers at
each other on the Place Royale or the
Cour la Refine, met at the mansion in
the Rue du jour. Here they were hos
pitably received and entertained; they
were offered cold collation. with
wines and liquors before entering the
lists, and those who had forgotten to
bring weapons were proyided with
goodly selection of polished steel.
Throughout the morning there was an
incessant clash of blades, each thrust
and parry being watched with intense
interest by veterans, who, after old
'cores had been wiped of, and the
resident surgeon had bandaged the
eombatants' wounds, were invited
with the duelists and their seconds.
TO luncheon with the Comte de Boute-
vile.
1t would doubtless be a vain quest
to seek, nowadays, for a single repre-
sentative of this defunct race of duel
lists, a race to which Choquart evident
ly belonged. He must have had an
cestors among the exquisites of the
reign of Louis Kill, the swash-buck-
lcrs of the Hotel de Royaumont, or the
splendid corps of musketeers of Louis
XIV. Choquart's mania for dueline,
his eyer-recurring provocations to de-
eide a difference at the swords point
made of him public character; and
his reputation was perhaps heightened
rather than diminished by the fact
that his most terrible challenges were
unable to withstand the offer of a
peaceful solution over bowl of punch.
His guileless talk and southern accent.
his peculiar way of lisping and other
physical oddities, gave to his daily
Odyssey a smack of the most genuine
comic buffoonery.
When the mania for fighting was
strong within him it was difficult to
evade his mood. One day he would
~nter a coffee-house, take his seat and
say to near neighbor:
CATER you, the Figaro. please"
"Sir," the other would politely re-
bpond, sit is not the Figaro, but the
Constitutional that l am reading"
"Oh! you would give me the lie,
would youP Take care, sir, or, by
Heavens! I'll teach you better man
ners."
On another occasion he would intro
duce like scene after this fashion:
0NOw don't Eeen ctor;no. Of mo =,